his dark materials

In Watercolours (HDM: Asriel/Marisa, E)

“Oh, Asriel, what will happen to us?” Mrs Coulter said again. “Is this the end of everything?” He said nothing.

He doesn’t often wake before her, but he can’t help but stare on the rare occasion that he does. She’s completely relaxed, the dawn light dancing across her features, no furrow in her brow, no glimmer of malicious delight in her eyes. He never gets the chance to just watch her - to take in the curve of her lips, the flutter of her eyelashes, the way the sunlight catches in her hair. And before he knows it, she’s awake, blinking slowly against the light, against the sight of him, the still-half-asleep beginning of a smirk forming, because she knows that he’s been watching her. He doesn’t give her a chance to make the comment he knows she’s thinking, doesn’t give her a chance to say anything at all, in a voice he knows will still rasp with the last traces of sleep, and instead, he kisses her, light and soft and slow, letting it linger as though they have all the time in the world.

When we kiss, it’s with a gravity we lacked before. Before we were avid, and selfish. I recognize him, I could recognize him in total darkness. Every man has his own rhythm, which remains the same. In this there is the relief of greeting.

Stoat